Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.

     “AUE” by Becky Manawatu. First published in 2019 by Makaro Press

            I am writing this review in 2024. Becky Manawatu’s novel Aue was published in 2019. It rapidly became a bestseller. It won many awards. It is regarded by some as a modern New Zealand classic and it has been reprinted a number of times. So how did I not get around to reading and reviewing this important novel when it was new? Simple. A case of my own stupidity. I requested a copy of Aue from the publishers, and they generously sent one. But by then the novel had been around for months, a horde of reviewers had already had their say, and I thought I was way behind the beat. So I set it aside and I didn’t get around to reading it until recently when I heard the rumour [now confirmed] that Becky Manawatu had written a sequel to Aue. So here I am. Late.

            A couple of obvious things to note. First, Aue is largely a Maori story written by a Maori. I am Pakeha and am therefore not fully attuned to many Maori attitudes and ideas - not that this makes for difficult reading. Second, that title Aue. It is often translated as howling, weeping, crying etc. In this case I see the better translation of Aue would be something like “lament” or even “alas”, because the novel is filled with many lamentations and sorrows for families being broken up, degeneration of some men with violence and drugs, some racism and deaths that should not have happened. Unlike the majority of Maori novels, which tend to be set in the North Island, Aue is set in a small South Island area in Kaikoura. 

 

Becky Manawatu divides her [longish] novel into two halves, the first called “Bird” and the second called “Song” – in the latter of which we are introduced to a voice [or voices?] presented in italics and speaking in a sort of mystic or prophetic way. The many chapters of the novel focus on three sets of people – the young boy Arama, his older brother Taukiri, and Jade [sometimes accompanied by Toko]. I’ll simplify the narrative by dealing with each group in turn.

8-year-old Arama is an orphan. Both his parents are dead. His elder brother Taukiri has left him with foster-parents, and then gone away. Young Arama spends much time hoping his brother will come back and trying hard to contact him without success. He is looked after reasonably well and is more-or-less home schooled. Aunty Kat [only very late in the novel we get her full name Kataraina] cares for him. But Uncle Stu – sometimes called a “redneck” so probably Pakeha – is often angry and a bully. Arama makes friends with the country girl Beth, who is the same age as Arama. Beth is in some ways more mature than Arama [fair enough – it is well known that girls mature earlier than boys], but she also introduces him to violent movies like Django Unchained and shows him some of the nastier elements of wild nature. However, most of what they do together is rambling around the rural area with the dog Lupo, or pranks and naughtiness – such as a very mean trick played on their teacher when that have to go to school at last. The best influence on Arama is Tom Aiken, who guides the kids into a more fruitful way of living. All the chapters involving Arama are written in the first person, told by Arama himself, so we get a child’s-eye- view. Becky Manawatu is very skilled in allowing us to see how Arama understands the world, naïve but questioning, often trying to understand what adults really mean and only partly understanding the relationships of adults.

Meanwhile older-brother Taukiri – who also tells his story in the first person - is determined not to come back to his little brother. He leads at first what amounts to a n’er-do-well life, wandering, not settling down. He lives in a car. He values his guitar and tries to make a living as a busker, even if he sometimes almost wrecks the guitar. For a while he has a factory job. Then he falls in with Elliot who knows a lot about illicit drugs. Taukiri doesn’t exactly get hooked, but he lives on the fringes of the drug community. He tries to seduce a number of young women and finally loses his virginity. For a while he busks on Cuba Street (in Wellington) and sometimes jams in a dive where he hears much about gangs and he learns how his father died. He has vague memories of how his (and Arama’s) mother was abducted and killed. Briefly he gets in touch with his kid brother. Tears. A drug-peddler offers to pay him well if he takes a consignment of drugs to a specific place at a specific time. Taukiri misses the target and becomes a marked man. He finally, as punishment, has to face up with an angry befuddled meth-taking gangster called Coon, a king pin of the gang, who is prepared to kill Taukiri

 

Then there are Jade and Toko – and here Becky Manawatu changes the tone considerably. The “Jade and Toko” sections are not only written in the third person, but they are anterior to the stories of Arama and Taukiri. In fact the narrative leaps back twenty-plus years earlier. Jade has experienced rape. She has slept with more than one man. Her parents used drugs. In fact her father Head had led a gang. Jade’s cousin Sav was pregnant but was embedded in the gang led by Coon. “Sav made herself a dodgy appointment when the boys had the run. A big boys’ mission. They were bringing in new shit – even newer to them than meth – and this shit was hard to get. Coon was breaking ground. An entrepreneur. Unlike Head, so stuck in his ways. Jade had encouraged it. ‘You’re gonna be a king.’ But she knew the gang – the game of gang – was already destroying itself. Smack would save them a drawn-out version of the inevitable. Coon would get him and his dumb entourage hooked and bring then down. Meth spurred on their violent tendencies. Heroin. Jade hoped, might just fuck them up, make them broke, maybe even make them dead. Jade saw an end. She and Sav just needed to ride it out.” (Pg 90  - page number quoted from the original publication). Jade wanted to save her cousin Sav by getting her out of the gang. But when Coon finds out that Sav is pregnant, sheer horror follows. Coon, buzzing with drugs, kicks and beats Sav, injects meth into her body and ultimately kills both Sav and the child in her womb. Jade breaks from Coon and his gang… and falls in love with Toko, a gentle man who plays his guitar and fishes. Toko sells his father’s house, buys a fishing boat, becomes a professional fisherman and brings Jade with him. Jade is totally entranced by this virile but gentle man. Her devotion is seen in one sequence after he’s been fishing “And he grabbed her and pulled her to his overalls, and she could smell the fish guts and blood on them, and could feel the dampness – the sweat from his days hard work – through her T-shirt. He smelled so earthy, so dirty, so masculine and good.” (Pg. 170) Their life is idyllic. They have a child. Later they have another child – both boys… at which point I halt this synopsis. You already know that both Jade and Toko die – you will discover that they both die by violence. And surely by this stage you understand that Arama and Taukiri are their sons. It is in the “Song” half of the novel that we hear the posthumous voice of Jade speaking to the future.

I confess that while I diligently read Aue, I sometimes found it hard to understand who was related to whom – there are so many people in the novel I left unmentioned. I have also skipped some major sub-plots. One concerns Aunty Kat, who is tired of being abused by Uncle Stu and who runs away from him when he has beaten her once too often and blacked her eye.

What are the main ideas of this novel? Certainly domestic and gang abusiveness are highlighted, Maori (in the gangs) and Pakeha (in the form of redneck Stu). When Aunty Kat runs away from Stu, she is asserting her right not to be abused and understanding that she can do much better on her own. A clearly feminist decision. Also highlighted is the necessity for good family ties – whanau –  which finally bring Taukiri and Arama  together again. Then there is the need for the positive upbringing of children.  Tom Aiken is the character who most mentors Arama, teaching him traditional skills such as trapping and killing eels. Tradition also means honouring one’s forebears. The moment Taukiri has to face up to angry, befuddled, meth-taking gangster Coon, we expect Coon to kill Taukiri. Instead, Coon talks at length, admitting that his life has been pure waste. Then he shoots himself. Moral? Taking hard drugs is a road to nowhere. A form of nihilism. These are hard but true morals.

I could add a few quibbles. Surely some readers of the novel other than I would see the improbability of a young kid (Beth) taking on angry Uncle Stu in a stand-off near the end of the novel, when Stu is recklessly waving firearms around. Maybe too, I could suggest that the reconciliation of some characters towards the end of the tale is a touch too easy. But those are only quibbles. Five years later, Aue still stands up very well.